CLUEDIT

• Six attempts on each puzzle, and a wrong guess uses one.
• A guess of the wrong length is refused rather than charged, so typos are free.
• Your score is attempts used: 1/6 means you got it cold. Where a game has a second currency — tokens or flips — it sits alongside, and fewer is better.
• Each puzzle keeps its own streak. Do one, do all three, in any order.

The category is doing more work than it looks. Read it, then brainstorm ten or fifteen words of the right length before you spend anything — the flips are worth far more once you have a shortlist to choose between.

• Flips are not free guesses. They cost no attempt, but every one you spend shows on your score, and there are only two to four of them.
• You do not choose the letter. The order is fixed for the day and the same for everybody, so nobody can fish for the easy square.
• The first letter comes last. It is the most useful square on the board, so it is only ever the final flip.
• Flips are never adjacent. Two letters side by side would give away a digraph, so they are always scattered.
• A wrong guess tells you nothing. No greens, no yellows, no "you were close". This is the one rule that makes the game its own thing.

Every cryptic clue is a definition plus wordplay, and the definition is always at one end of the clue or the other — never in the middle. Find the split and you have halved the problem. The five tricks:

• Anagram — letters rearranged. Look for mixed, broken, cooked, wild, out of order, badly, oddly.
• Hidden word — the answer spelled out inside the clue, usually across a gap between two words. Look for in, inside, some of, held by, concealed.
• Charade — small pieces joined end to end, usually not signposted at all.
• Double definition — two meanings of the same word, side by side.
• Reversal and soundalike — backwards (back, returning) or the sound of something else (we hear, reportedly).